The present invention relates to a tire/wheel assembly, a run-flat support member, and a manufacturing method therefor. More specifically, the present invention relates to a tire/wheel assembly, a run-flat support member, and a manufacturing method therefor, which enable low-cost manufacturing of various sized tire/wheel assemblies and the like and also make it possible to achieve diversification of the run-flat performance at low cost.
In response to demands from the market, there have been many technologies proposed to allow a vehicle to run urgently for several hundreds of kilometers even when a pneumatic tire is punctured while the vehicle is running. Among these many proposals, technologies proposed in Japanese patent Laid-Open Publication No. 10-297226 and Published Japanese Translation of a PCT application No. 2001-519279 enable run-flat traveling by fitting a core onto a rim in the inner side of a cavity of a pneumatic tire that is assembled to the rim, and by supporting the punctured tire using the core.
The foregoing run-flat core includes a circular shell in which the outer circumferential side thereof serves as a support surface and the inner circumferential side thereof is opened so as to form two leg portions. Also, an elastic ring is fitted to both leg portions of the circular shell, thus the run-flat core is supported on the rim through the elastic ring. By using this run-flat core, a conventional wheel and rim can be used as they are without any particular modifications. Therefore, the run-flat core is advantageously adopted without causing confusion in the market.
However, in order to use the run-flat core in the market, the core has to be made suitable for each size of the rim or tire. Therefore, preparation of various kinds of equipment and the like such as molds for manufacturing is required, thus increasing the costs substantially. Moreover, when wanting to change the run-flat performance of the core, a new mold has to be made even if the size of the core is not changed. Accordingly, a cost increase in manufacturing becomes an inevitable problem as the run-flat performance is more diversified.